Fellows


Fellows in Residence
Spring 2024 - Group 3


ARCHITECTURE

Joseph Heathcott

Joseph Heathcott – Professor of Urban Studies and Design at The New School in New York – United States

Joseph Heathcott is Professor and Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies at The New School, where he teaches in Parsons School of Design and the School for Public Engagement. His work has appeared in a wide range of venues, from scholarly books and articles to exhibits and juried art shows. He has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Princeton School of Architecture, Sciences Po, and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Joseph Heathcott will be working on a book tentatively titled Worlding Heritage: Historic Urban Landscapes and the Conservation Imaginary. The book examines the ideological and political contours of heritage conservation through a series of case studies. At the root of this project are fundamental questions about the nature of heritage, the meanings that we make of our legated buildings and landscapes, and what versions of the past we will save in order to project them into the future.

DANCE

Sigal Bergman
Photo Franzi Kreis

Sigal Bergman – Choreographer, dancer, and Alexander Technique teacher – United States/Israel

Sigal Bergman is a choreographer, dancer, and Alexander Technique teacher based in Tel Aviv, Israel. She was educated in Israel, Holland, and NYC in various physical and psychophysical techniques, including Release Technique, Contact Improvisation, Tai Ji (Yang), Yoga (Iyengar), and Alexander Technique. Her recent choreographic work includes Revert to Manual #2 (2022), Red Bitter (2020), Revert to Manual (2018), and Pale Fire (2016), all works that mix speech and movement. Her choreographies were supported by multiple grants from Mifal HaPais, the Israeli Council for Culture and Arts, the Rabinowitz Foundation for the Arts, and by many residencies.

For an upcoming dance trio to be performed in 2024, Sigal Bergman will be creating movement sequences that reflect on transforming chaos into strength. Drawing from images of political upheaval and violence as well as Renaissance paintings depicting physical struggle and torment, she is studying the ways in which forceful energy can be turned into feminine power, personal order, and beauty.

FILM/VIDEO

An van. Dienderen

An van. Dienderen – Filmmaker – Belgium

An van. Dienderen is a filmmaker who graduated in audiovisual arts (Sint-Lukas, Brussels), obtained a Ph.D. in Comparative Cultural Sciences (Ghent University), and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. She made several documentaries screened worldwide, which were awarded with (inter)national prizes. She publishes and lectures internationally on documentary, film, and visual/performative anthropology. She is affiliated as a tenured professor and senior researcher at KASK & CONSERVATORIUM School of Arts Ghent.

An van. Dienderen will work on the documentary KOPIRAET, following the trail to Vanuatu of Lengnangulong, a stone ‘collected’ in Vanuatu and now exhibited in the Louvre. Together with anthropologist Hugo DeBlock, who is adopted by Chief Johnson, they ask for the help of Hugo’s inner circle in Vanuatu. KOPIRAET explores the meaning of ownership and copyright, in the challenging context of its asymmetrical relationships. How do images by Western filmmakers cycle back to the source community?

HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP

Christia Mercer

Christia Mercer (Philosophy) – Historian of Philosophy – United States

Christia Mercer is the Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, general editor of Oxford Philosophical Concepts, co-editor of Oxford New Histories of Philosophy, and director of Just Ideas, an educational program in a maximum security prison in Brooklyn, New York.

Christia Mercer will polish a manuscript on the understudied philosopher, Anne Conway (1631-1679) whose only work, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophies, was published posthumously in 1690. The main goal of Anne Conway: The Philosophy of Radical Equality, is to reveal that Conway’s thought is metaphysically, theologically, and politically more radical than previously imagined.

LITERATURE

Andy Chen
Photo Jess X Snow

Andy Chen – Poet and Assistant Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity & Engagement at John Burroughs School – United States – John Burroughs Bogliasco Special Fellow

Andy Chen was born and raised in the pretty part of New Jersey. The recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, he holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. His poems appear in Ploughshares, New England Review, The Offing, and elsewhere, and his reviews appear in Hong Kong Review of Books, Hyphen, and Colorado Review. He teaches at John Burroughs School in St. Louis.

Andy Chen will be working on a collection of poems exploring the intersection of identity and lived experience. The poems engage a range of concerns, including desire, family, masculinity, racism, and basketball. These concerns exist in the poems alongside an exploration of the Asian American experience and the mythologies that make up the wider American experience. The collection will include a series of poems in conversation with the Filial Exemplars, a Confucian text on filial piety.

MUSIC

Amelia Huff

Amelia Huff – Multidisciplinary artist, thinker, and educator – United States – Aaron Copland Bogliasco Special Fellow in Music

Amelia Huff is a multidisciplinary artist, thinker, and educator with a goal of mastering sound to express, articulate, and codify knowledge, empowering others to express themselves more freely through sound.

Amelia Huff will work on her practical and expository music treatise, Overtone Intonation, which advances new forms of intonation theory and surrounding philosophy on pure intonation. Accompanying the written work, visual and auditory resources will be developed to support a multimedia music theory resource. With this project, Amelia will illuminate new depths of the harmonic series while simplifying pure intonation to equip curious artists with a pathway into microtonality.

THEATER

David Cote

David Cote – Librettist, playwright, and theater critic – United States

David Cote is a librettist, playwright, and theater critic based in New York City. His current projects include an opera with Scott Davenport Richards about the life and activism of Paul Robeson; a chamber opera with Laura Kaminsky about music therapy and memory; and a one-act with Stefan Weisman for mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn about Greenland’s melting ice sheet. Previous work includes Blind Injustice (Cincinnati Opera), Three Way (Nashville Opera, BAM) and The Scarlet Ibis (Prototype).

David will revise the libretto of a multimedia opera, Meltdown, in which a glaciologist’s lecture on ice loss morphs into a personal and scientific experience of grief and resolve. The work will be composed by Stefan Weisman for mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn. He will also begin a new period drama about the 150-year popularity of a bowdlerized “happy ending” King Lear, and a heroic London actress who fights to restore the original.

VISUAL ARTS

Nada Abu Taleb

Nada Abu Taleb – Visual Artist – Yemen

Artist Protection Fund Fellow, Nada Abu Taleb is a Yemeni visual artist and architect who has been making work for 13 years. Nada began her journey from within—to discover the worlds and paths that led her to who she is today. Inspired by Carl Jung’s archetype of the “shadow,” Nada’s artistic practice reflects her inner journey toward uncovering layers of personality through recognizing and admitting the existence of the dark “shadow.” A crucial existence that must be acknowledged, excepted, and integrated to create an authentic version of oneself.

Nada continues her Artist Protection Fund Fellowship, which began at AARome, in residence at Bogliasco. She has participated in local and international exhibitions, including two solo exhibitions in Sana’a, Yemen. During her time at Bogliasco, Nada hopes to grow her creative practice and learn more about the world around her—and how it reflects her own journey—through the experiences that unfold on the way.

Liu Cheng-hsiang

Liu Cheng-hsiang – Artist and Director of Shawn Liu Studio – Taiwan

With "connection" as a core, Liu Cheng-hsiang delves into new media art, photography, and technology, probing artificial-natural interplay while contemplating existence. By merging nature's generative logic, he explores human-machine synergy and AI creativity via algorithms. He founded "Shawn Liu Studio" '16, which offers cultural consulting. His global residencies since '21 (Hong Kong, France, Iceland) and exhibitions showcase the possibility of technology's influence on the human experience.

During his residency in Bogliasco, Liu Cheng-hsiang aims to capture the essence of Genoa's modern architecture and cultural richness. Utilizing generative art algorithms, he seeks to merge images to produce textures that harmoniously blend futuristic concepts with present-day experiences. Experimenting with coding and generative art techniques, he transforms images into generative drawings, thereby pushing the boundaries of visual expression.